Crash Course on Creativity - Challenge Assumptions: Polyphasic Sleep

1. Crash Course On Creativity
Challenge Assumptions 3:
Reducing sleep time by becoming a polyphasic sleeper
H. Zimmer, December 2012

2. “Is it possible to cut your total sleep time in half,
yet feel completely refreshed?
The short answer is yes.”
- Tim Ferriss, bestselling author of “The 4 Hour Body“ and “The 4 Hour
Workweek”

3. Traditional sleep schedule
7-8 hours of nighttime sleep (or more), about a third of your day. Problem: When you
are unable to get that uninterrupted sleep time at night due to various reasons, you run
a deficit and become increasingly tired and unable to perform your daily routines.

4. Variations: Biphasic aka “Siesta”
Core sleep: 6 hours. Naps: One during the afternoon, usually 20-30 minutes.
Fairly common multi-phase solution that can be observed with many animals, as well
as in certain cultures and geographies (e.g. Spain, Latin America, some countries in
Asia). Though there often the “siesta” is held in addition to a regular long core sleep at
night.

5. Variations: Everyman
Core sleep: 1.5 - 4.5 hours. Naps: 2-4, 20 minutes each, spaced throughout the day.
Observational studies and self-reports by practitioners suggest that this can be
sustained for longer periods of time, especially in the less radical variations.
A 4.6 hours per day schedule with intermittent short deep sleep phases can e.g. be
observed in giraffes, a very large organism. Sleep schedule image source: Dustin Curtis

6. Variations: Uberman
Core sleep: None. Naps: 6, 20 minutes each spaced every 4 hours through day and
night.
Radical concept. Not recommended for long periods and only for situations like
pending deadlines, though it can be sustained by some for many months (see examples).
One extreme variation is called “Dymaxion” (only four 30 minute naps every 6 hours).

7. “You must sleep sometime between lunch and dinner, and no
halfway measures. Take off your clothes and get into bed. That's
what I always do. Don't think you will be doing less work because
you sleep during the day. That's a foolish notion held by people
who have no imaginations. You will be able to accomplish more.
You get two days in one - well, at least one and a half”
Examples: Winston Churchill (Siesta)
British wartime prime minister. Churchill's biphasic sleep habits are well documented by
quotes from himself and his aides. F. D. Roosevelt's aides noted that after a Churchill visit,
the US president was so exhausted that he needed 10 hours of sleep for 3 days straight to
recover.

8. Examples: Matt Mullenweg (Uberman)
Creator of the popular WordPress blogging platform, developed while by his own
account living on an “Uberman” sleep schedule for a year. Named one of Business
Week’s 25 Most Influential People on the Web.

9. Examples: Leonardo Da VincI (allegedly)
Renaissance man, “universal genius”. Legend has it that the master “cat napped” for 15-
20 minutes every 4 hours, for a total of 1.5 to 2 hours of sleep close to the “Uberman”
schedule. Probably an urban myth to explain his extreme productivity.

10. “Most people overeat 100 percent, and
oversleep 100 percent, because they like
it. That extra 100 percent makes them
unhealthy and inefficient. The person
who sleeps eight or ten hours a night is
never fully asleep and never fully awake
- they have only different degrees of doze
through the twenty-four hours"
- Thomas Alva Edison
Examples: Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Edison
Founding Father, principal author of the Declaration of Independence, third US President.
Like fellow politician, businessman and inventor Benjamin Franklin he slept rather briefly
and irregularly, but mainly at night, so it could be an urban myth.
Prolific inventor Thomas Edison was known for not requiring much sleep and assuming
most people sleep too much. But he stuck to a monophasic or biphasic schedule, napping
when he became sleepy yet not on a regular predetermined schedule.

11. Sleep Mindmap (previous assignment):
Probably a variety of methods has to be used to optimize your sleep: Link

12. Requirements
Technical devices: You probably can‘t learn to sleep polyphasic without some
technical tracking devices to assist you initially such as the Zeo Sleep Manager or
the Fitbit, or at least a good alarm clock/smartphone and detailed schedule.
Polyphasic schedules require that you have figured out and eliminated other
sources of insomnia. If you e.g. can‘t fall asleep fast and lie awake in bed twisting
and turning or have problems getting up in the morning, you won‘t be able to stick
to a schedule of short naps.
See my Mindmap for some potential solutions to fix other sleep issues.

13. Limitations
Catch: The shorter your core sleep and the more naps you take (and thus the less
sleep you have in total), the more rigorous you have to be regarding the exact
TIMING of your naps within a shorter and shorter target window.
If you miss a nap, your whole schedule is thrown off, and you will feel tired for the
day or even for multiple days, as you would when missing sleep on a traditional
monophasic schedule!
So if you work a regular 9-5 job at the office for a company that is inflexible to
those demands, or have to travel a lot (across time zones), it will be more difficult
for you to stick to it.
Especially the more radical sleep schedules can be incompatible with social
activities of other people, e.g. your family members.

14. Recommendation
Start with testing out biphasic sleep (siesta)
6 hours of core sleep, and one 20 minute power nap in the afternoon that can be
accommodated and sustained even with a busy and fairly inflexible schedule.
Then experiment with the least radical “Everyman 2-nap” sleep schedule, or a
siesta variation with also 4.5 hours of core sleep but one longer 90 minute nap.
Have fun trying it out, and happy dreams.